Tom Crean Archive

The Big Ten held its weekly coaches teleconference on Monday morning to review the fifth week of conference play. Here are some notes and quotes from Tom Crean’s appearance:

· On Tuesday’s game at Wisconsin, how the Badgers match up with IU on the perimeter and what the Hoosiers will need to do defensively: “Taking size out of it, which is hard to do because they are so big at numerous positions, but the bottom line is how skilled they are. It would be one thing if it was just big guys that could do one or two things, but they can do a lot of things. They can drive the ball, they can pass the ball, they can all shoot the ball and they can all shoot it with range, especially now with the way Nigel Hayes is shooting it and Sam (Dekker) and Frank (Kaminsky) have improved immensely over a period of time. They’ve got seven or eight guys right now, taking Traevon (Jackson) out, it’s even surprising how they’ve played. It just goes to show the skill level in the system when you take a guy like Traevon out of the equation. The problem is that you cannot give into anything. If you back off of someone, they can knock in a 3, if you help, they can kick the ball, if you help they can all get to the offensive glass, so it’s really about defending the personnel as much as it is defending how they run their offense and it’s coming down and really understanding what you need to get defensively. We can’t get overly caught up in the lack of size that we have and the abundance that they have. We’ve got to get really caught up in the skill level of the players.”

On Monday evening, Indiana coach Tom Crean spoke at his weekly radio show hosted by Don Fischer and recapped the Hoosiers’ win over Maryland and loss to Ohio State, while also looking ahead to Wednesday’s game at Purdue.

Below are news and notes from what the Hoosiers’ coach had to say:

— Firstly, Crean reflected on the Hoosiers’ 89-70 victory against Maryland, saying the result showed how good they can be “when everything is going right.” Crean also commended his team on how they were able to take away things from the Terrapins bigs, especially in the second half — as first half leading scorer 6-foot-9 Jake Layman was held to just two points in the final 20 minutes.

— After going 7-for-32 on 3-pointers in the Hoosiers’ first five Big Ten games, junior Yogi Ferrell went 13-for-19 on 3-point attempts in Indiana’s two games this past week. Crean said Ferrell shooting 3-pointers before and after practices in the leadup to the Maryland game helped get his shooting confidence back — that the net only got bigger from there. Crean also mentioned that it appears Ferrell has been the biggest beneficiary of having 6-foot-7 Collin Hartman as a starter, as it gives opponents yet another shooter to cover and one less defender to guard Ferrell.

— Since the Hoosiers’ trip to Montreal, one of Crean’s biggest priorities in coaching his team has been producing guard rebounds. The harder the block-outs are, the more guard rebounds there will be. But on Sunday against the Buckeyes, the Hoosiers didn’t grade out high in that category, Crean said. He said the Hoosiers have to also understand the sheer importance of rebounds — and how that affects their transition offense, as well. “If a guy is not a participant in the rebounding on the defensive end,” Crean noted, “It’s gonna be hard to play him.”

Indiana sophomore Devin Davis, who returned to school this semester after a traumatic brain injury in early November, will not play this season.

On the ESPNU college basketball podcast this morning with Andy Katz and Seth Greenburg, IU coach Tom Crean said that Davis has returned to classes, but not on a full-time basis, and that the hope is that he’ll be fully recovered for next season.

“He’s got a lot of different things that he’s having to deal with and continuing to build his therapy,” Crean told Katz. “He’s making progress, the doctors say he’s making progress and his attitude is great. There’s certainly no way he’s going to play this year, obviously, but hopefully he’s going to have a full recovery and an even better understanding and maturity to be able to go next year.”